


break

by charcoalsuns



Series: sportsfest 2018 [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/F, Resolution, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-12 12:24:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15339816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoalsuns/pseuds/charcoalsuns
Summary: Mao tries to prevent Yui's death. In which they finally pull forward.content warning: descriptions of gun and knife violence, inflicted wounds, character death (temporary, in the sense of time loops)





	break

**Author's Note:**

> (BR 2) [for a prompt by mugenn](https://sportsfest.dreamwidth.org/8539.html?thread=994651#cmt994651):
> 
> _"I'll do it over, no matter how many times it takes... I'll relive it over and over again. I will find the way out. The one path that'll save you from this destiny of despair. Madoka... my one and my only friend. I don't care... because if it's for you, I'll stay trapped in this endless maze... forever."_  
>  — Akemi Homura, Puella Magi Madoka Magica
> 
> (not quite a dark matter au, but the settings and scenarios here are reflected from those in its episodes)

  


There are many ways to die in space.

  
  
  


_"Life support..."_ crackles Yui's voice over the radio.

_Gone,_ Mao dreads, twitches her head like death is a fly on her skin, reaches for a control panel five turns and seven hallways and a set of heavy, hijacked doors away. "Which section," as she drags her elbows closer, inch by meager inch, telling herself to remember to fix the tracking on their radios for next time. "Where are you?" She can't get to her feet. Her thigh is bleeding out onto the floor, accountable blade now useless in the limp hand of the body on her firing side.

Hum of the engines, gunshots echoing through the vents. From Yui, only static.

  
  
  


Their radios are dead. If the thinning air is any indication, they'll be next.

_"Where is it?"_

The intruders' voices leak from their helmets, hiss from blinding depths that give away none of their faces. Spattered in streaks and chunks across the doomed ship, the rest of their fellows are unrecognizable, too.

"I won't tell you," Yui says, eyes blazing even in profile, even as her legs shake where she kneels, even as Mao's heart threatens to hammer hard enough to splinter through her chest. Even when one intruder grasps a weapon and shoots Yui four times down her torso, and Mao can't see her eyes anymore.

  
  
  


"We don't have to take this job," Mao tells her, heart pounding fear and intuition as one through her veins. It seems the right choice to make, to steer them away before it begins. "It's difficult now with just the two of us, but it'll be dangerous, too, if we're so far away from every connection we've ever made."

Yui looks at her, and Mao knows then that she's taken a wayward approach. "I know we don't have to," Yui says, "But how many others have they asked already? And how many new connections do you think we can make out there?" Her grin lights a beacon toward a home Mao needs no guide toward, its destruction now as certain as the fact that Mao will see herself trying to stop it, trying to save her.

When did this bomb begin counting down? When was the last wire twisted into place?

By whose hand?

When Yui puts hers between them, palm up and waiting in a question that has never needed to be asked, Mao reaches back without a second's further thought. She folds her fingers across the bones and tendons of Yui's hand, slides her thumb across her first knuckle, where her skin is dry, but not yet broken.

"Of course," she vows. "Of course I'm with you."

  
  
  


This is a pit stop. Nothing but routine, nothing but a quiet, lawful exchange of credits for supplies.

A pack of armed figures bursts toward them on the docks, dressed white as an explosion and blinding them half a second enough to force their way onboard.

_"Where is it?"_ they hiss from somewhere in their helmets; three of them slump to the floor as the two of them draw and strike, sending red floods down slit necks, over sterile lapels.

"Where is _what?_ " Mao shouts, stepping forward. She cuts through the air, through layers of white, pulls out spurts of blood, and pulls their attention toward herself. The right sequence is within arm's reach. It has to be. 

But, "I won't tell you," Yui says, commanding -- covering up, Mao can tell, and Mao can lunge out and detach the arm turning a gun in her direction, can sink bullets into seams until they burst, can press her back solidly to Yui's and feel Yui pushing off for leverage as they shoot and slice and strip away unwelcome flesh onto the floor of their ship. 

Mao cannot keep her weapons raised when Yui is struck down. 

Is this the fifteenth time? The hundredth? 

Recoil rings in her ears as she drops to the ground beside her, knees slamming into corrugated metal. _Take this one for answers,_ spits a white blur in her periphery, before everything outside Yui and Yui's quick breaths and Yui's blood soaking across her gut is deafened by a cry that tastes as wrong on Mao's tongue as it did the first time. 

Yui has always been the warmest presence, the warmest light. Mao holds her palms as hard as she dares against the gashes, shaking from fingertips to shoulders with a useless plea caught broken in her throat. Blood is warmest directly from a wound. 

_No. No, no. No. Not again._

Yui's eyes are still open when they drag Mao away, twisting her arms behind her cold, caving back. Yui doesn't blink. Mao closes her eyes. 

And she knows, as she's chained to a chair, as the tools are sharpened, as she counts on stained fingers all the things she needs to remember to change, that the only answer she will ever have to the question of _again?_ is _yes._

  
  
  


Sometimes, there's little blood. 

Sometimes, there's a blinking red light on a map of the ship, tracking a radio signal cornered and fighting, and memories are sufficient imagination when the light goes dark.

  
  
  


Sometimes, in the struggle, Mao gets dragged into the airlock with the last of the intruders. 

Yui, guns empty and raised hands backlit by emergency flashes, refuses to open the outer doors. 

Mao doesn't remember how these times end. Only that they do.

  
  
  


The last second ticks past on the bomb Mao built to counter the one she cannot see. 

There are shrieks like boiling water from helmets heated to just below exploding, and Yui hurtling them both through the nearest set of doors, Yui braced over her, a breath and brief victory between their faces. 

There is a trickle of air that turns into a stream that turns into an endless wave away that they manage to block by manually, strenuously closing off their section of hallway. 

"The life support," Yui says, voice dissipating from exertion, as she inspects the unresponsive control station beside them. 

"Gone before we can get to the bridge." Mao pulls herself toward a wall, inch by meager inch, to lean herself against it. 

Yui closes her eyes. A moment later, she's looking directly at Mao, and Mao has no further choices to make. "You knew we were going to be attacked," Yui tells her. "You were ready for them." 

_Not ready enough._ After all these times, still not ready enough. Mao starts to take a deep breath, then thinks better of it, tipping her head slowly back against a vent grid. "I've lost count of how many times I've tried to be ready," she says. The doors inside the ship aren't completely airtight. Not against a blown-open vacuum. "I think, in a few minutes, everything will turn back, and I'll try again." 

She watches as Yui reaches toward the implications, wide eyes and growing horror. "Oh," she says, "Oh, no." She swallows, shifting closer until their ankles overlap, until her forehead is burrowed against Mao's heart, and Mao's hands are held in hers. "This shouldn't be yours to carry. I'm so sorry." 

Mao presses her lips to the top of Yui's head, stays there, bowed as if in prayer. "Don't be. Please." She'd almost gotten it right, this time. Yui's weight against her is the only thing keeping her from self-destructing in frustration. Yui's tears spread over her skin, wrong, and preventable. "You didn't know. There's a reason, I'm sure, for why you don't remember, and I do." 

Silence leads to chilling fear, when their ship's internal atmosphere is leaking into open space. But before the end, Yui leans back, hands still clasped around Mao's, gentle and firm. "Tell me, then. Tell me what you remember. _Make sure I know what happens._ "

  
  
  


There is one way to live in space. 

"I wanted to keep you safe," Mao says when she finds it. 

Yui stares, a shallow cut down her cheek. She flicks the safety on her gun, drops it onto the metal floor beside her sword, and drives her fist into Mao's side. "You said you were with me," she says, eyes blazing warm. "Don't hold things from me. Don't forget I'm with you, too." 

There are no bodies to dispose of. Between the two of them, they sweep up a small pile of burnt fabric scraps and shards of helmet, a less small pile of limbs and cross-sections, bloodsoaked and ruptured from poison. Once the airlock is closed on the remains, Yui opens the outer doors. Their control panels are all intact. 

Back on the bridge, pit stop behind them, they set a course to their next destination. Mao holds out a hand, palm up, waiting, asking, trust blooming in her chest, and relief. 

Yui's smile feels like the rise of a new sun. "Well, let's go," she says, taking Mao's hand. "Let's get this done."

  



End file.
